Subject: Pronouns in the GNOME translation

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 14:01:00 -0400

As I get farther into the GNOME translation, I'm faced with doubts about which
pronouns to use in messages. There are five different situations that come into
effect:

These cases come from the user choosing items in a menu or a dialog box:
1. The user telling the computer to perform an action (I use ko)
2. The user choosing a setting for what the computer should do, but not
immediately (I use zo'e; "Show tasklist arrow" is "selctagau tu'a le samru'e
bo liste jesni" ["the tasklist arrow is shown"]).
3. The user telling the computer what he intends to do ("Browse" = "mi sisku")
4. The computer telling the user to perform an action (ko)
5. The computer telling the user what it is doing (So far, I've been using
strategically-placed "goi ko'a" the first time the program refers to itself
when I have to deal with this)

The cases I'm most uncomfortable with are 2 (things which sound like they
should be commands get phrased without "ko"), 4 (what if it's not clear which
"ko" it is?) and 5 (I'd like a consistent way to refer to whatever program is
being interacted with, but 'mi' sounds wrong and would create confusion with
3).

I think what I need are some other pronouns which I can use consistently.
Perhaps 2 would be done with something like "skami bu"?

Any suggestions?
--
Rob Speer